


Vale of friendship

by queen_ypolita



Category: Maurice - E. M. Forster
Genre: Community: queer_fest, F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-12
Updated: 2013-06-12
Packaged: 2017-12-14 19:19:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,481
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/840443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queen_ypolita/pseuds/queen_ypolita
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kitty Hall, growing up to understand she loves women.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Vale of friendship

**Author's Note:**

> Written for queer_fest 2013 prompt: Kitty Hall, no one in the family ever knew that there were two queer Hall siblings.

They had come to stay with Grandfather this summer the same way Kitty remembered them doing every summer, herself, Ada, Morrie and Mother, except this year there was no Papa to come to visit at weekends when he could get away from the office. There was a wonderful garden to roam in and bookcases bursting with interesting books that she was free to explore if it was too wet to play in the garden. But she never seemed to do anything right. Even after a long afternoon of hide-and-seek in the garden Ada's dress and hair were still neat and tidy, whereas Kitty's were pronounced a disgrace and she was sent inside to change. There were constant reminders that children were to be seen, not heard. And Morrie, of course, was a boy, could come and go as he pleased, and nobody said anything. She was used to the injustice of being the youngest, a girl, not as pretty and agreeable as her sister, but it didn't make her feel any better. 

But this summer turned out be a little different from the previous summers. Aunt Isobel came to stay, as she always did, and brought her two young sons, but also Ellen, whose mother was Aunt Isobel's friend and who was Kitty's age. And Ellen liked roaming in the garden just as much as Kitty did, and at the end of the afternoon when they were ushered into the house to change for dinner, her dress was creased and grass-stained just like Kitty's, but the inevitable scolding didn't have the same sting it had when it was her alone being scolded and compared to Ada. 

It was the best summer Kitty had ever had. 

***

It had rained incessantly all day and by the afternoon Kitty was bored. Ada and Mother were chattering over embroidery, Grandfather was going over his accounts, Aunt Ida had household matters to take care of and Maurice had disappeared to somewhere with a book after lunch. The library was still her favourite place in Grandfather's house, more interesting than the delicate lace shawl that she had been knitting and unpicking all morning, so she decided to abandon it and amuse herself with books. 

Grandfather had always allowed all three of them a free reign in his library. Kitty had spent many happy hours just looking at the illustrations of plants in the botany book or the star charts in the astronomy ones. She picked a book up at random, then another from another shelf. The first was in Latin, and she put it aside, the second was a collection of Wordworth's poetry. They had read Wordsworth as school and she hadn't been too keen but she settled in the chair by the fireplace, opened the book and read a line here, another line there, sometimes reading the entire poem. 

Afterwards she wasn't quite sure what had initially caught her eye about one of the poems. It probably wasn't the dedication, she usually skipped those along with titles. It might have been the Welsh place-names. It might have been the "Vale of Friendship". It might have been "Sisters in love", "above the reach of time", as that was the image that stayed with her even after she had put the book back on its shelf and returned to Ada and Mother and her knitting: two women, sharing their lives in a place of friendship. It was an exciting idea, although she didn't really understand why. 

***

The summer Kitty was sixteen, Sylvia became her best friend. They had known each other before, like girls with families living in the same quiet suburb do, sat next to each other in dusty classrooms trying to learn geography and French verbs, but they had each had their own closest friends. That summer they became inseparable, closer than sisters: they read the same books and never failed to disagree about them, spent every minute they could in each other's company, wrote long letters when they couldn't, walked arm-in-arm on the street, shared their secrets. 

No friend had ever made Kitty feel like this, like Sylvia was the friend she had always longed for but never had had before. When Sylvia visited an aunt in Scotland in September, being away from her was almost an agony. At least there were letters; long, frequent letters, and Sylvia complained about the boredom of her Aunt Caroline being so set in her ways. Sylvia's stories about people she'd met (as Aunt Caroline was constantly introducing Sylvia to her friends) made her feel more unsettled, but it took a while before Kitty recognised her feelings as jealousy: she wanted Sylvia for herself, she was afraid Sylvia would meet someone else who was more interesting and more beautiful. 

But when Sylvia returned home, everything went back to how it had been before: they were still inseparable. 

Then it was New Year's Eve and everything changed. Kitty stayed at Sylvia's; Sylvia's parents had a party. Sylvia kept close to Kitty all evening, whispering disrespectful comments about her parents' guests, especially the awkward young men who blushed and stuttered the moment they tried to speak to either of them. Her wisps of breath against Kitty's ear and neck made her shiver. After midnight, they stumbled into Sylvia's bed and Sylvia pulled her close, but it didn't feel close enough, so Kitty wrapped her arms tighter around Sylvia and kissed her. She hadn't thought about it before, it just seemed right at the time, and as awkward as it was it felt right. Sylvia went still, and Kitty thought her heart would beat out of her chest, but then Sylvia smiled and kissed her, and it felt perfect. 

In the morning, Kitty woke up happy, only to find Sylvia sitting by her dressing-table, with an expression that chilled Kitty to her bones. They both acted normal until it was time for Kitty to go home. 

***

The weeks that followed were hard. She wanted her family to notice that she wasn't happy, but as long as she kept to the ways of the household, nobody said anything. She wanted them to ask about Sylvia, about why Kitty never saw her again, but she had no idea what she would say if they did ask. Sylvia had been her best friend, and something else. She didn't know exactly what that something else was. She vaguely remembered the lines she had read years ago, "vale of friendship", "sisters in love". What she'd had with Sylvia had been like that, only it was over now, and she wouldn't be able to find anything like it ever again. 

She tried to stop thinking about it, to find something else to do. Reading didn't give her much pleasure any more: whenever she picked up a novel she found herself wondering what Sylvia would say. So she looked for other reading matter, books that had belonged to her father and had been sitting on the shelves in his study since his death, other books that Maurice had haphazardly shelved with them. Some of the books bored her to tears, others she found inspiring as they made her think, made her want to be something other than just the younger sister, the silly girl who will be good for nothing real. She looked around for her options, started pestering Maurice about the Domestic Institute. It took much longer than she'd expected to wear him down, long enough for her to start feel that she was doomed to become an quarrelsome old woman whose only purpose in life was to keep the house for her elderly mother and confirmed bachelor brother. 

After all the waiting and arguing, the Domestic Institute was never going to live up to all her hopes, but it gave her new things to think about and more importantly, she made friends. Miss Tonks had seemed shy and reserved at first, but she soon became a close friend. And through her, a whole new world opened up: trips to the theatre, women's demostrations, socialist meetings. And Violet's friends: women who had jobs in the city, women were always campaigning for something or other, women who dressed in men's suits, women who shared their lives with other women. It was intimidating; she never stopped feeling her suburban life didn't live up to the feats these brave new women were accomplishing in their day-to-day lives, but it was exciting, intoxicating. She didn't feel as alone any more. 

***

When Maurice disappeared from their lives in confusing circumstances, she couldn't help feeling it was an opportunity for her: Mother went to live with Ada and Chapman, a friend she'd met through Violet offered to share her digs with her, she found an office job, and Anna, a friend of one of Violet's friends, made her heart flutter. At last, she was happy and looking forward to whatever the future would bring.

**Author's Note:**

> The poem Kitty reads is "To Lady Eleanor Butler and the Honourable Miss Ponsonby, Composed in the grounds of Plas-Newydd, Llangollen" by William Wordsworth


End file.
